Months before the battle between old school and new school on Ta Keo beach, before Kelley Wentworth snagged an idol from the underside of a raft in the middle of a challenge, before Jeremy Collins went on to win with one of the most well-designed social games in the history of the show, there was Survivor Kaôh Rōng: Brains vs Beauty vs Brawn.

Two months have passed since the end of Survivor Cambodia—Second Chance, a season that stretched from the public voting campaign in early May through the season finale in December. That seven-month experience pales in comparison to the nearly yearlong wait for the cast members of Kaôh Rōng, the 32nd season of the show, but the 31st filmed; it taped in the same Cambodia location as Second Chance, weeks before Collins, Wentworth and the other Survivor veterans hit the beach.

“It’s very different,” says Survivor host and head honcho Jeff Probst. “It’s a completely different feel. You almost can’t believe it’s the same location, it’s so different.”

Probst identifies the conditions of Cambodia as the key difference between the two shows. While there were periods of heavy downpour and heat during Second Chance, the location’s harsh environment was far worse during filming on Kaôh Rōng.

“This will go down as the toughest 39 days any group has ever faced,” says Probst, “and you see that within the 90-minute premiere—there are already three people who have fairly big issues to deal with.”

It’s not just players who suffered during the season, either. Probst, who spent every night glued to the radio for updates on the health of the contestants, says that even crew members were evacuated back to the United States for the treatment of infections.

“Here’s what’s deceiving about a game like Survivor,” he says. “When I say, ‘We had some really bad infections [this season],’ people hear that and they go, ‘I’ve had a bad infection. I went to a doctor, got a little shot, and it was fine.’ And that’s true, but when you’re on an island with unclean water, extreme heat, bugs, and you get a cut in the ocean, and you can’t go to the local doctor to get a shot, and the infection grows… it can grow so fast and spread so fast that it can truly become life-threatening. Not life-threatening in the sense of you’re not going to feel good; life-threatening in the sense of, you might lose your leg.”

When the horrid conditions and injuries mix together with the basic premise of Survivor—a grueling competition tasking players with living in a remote setting for weeks with minimal food and sleep, all while wrapping their minds around incredibly complicated social structures and strategic maneuvers—you’re left with the perfect recipe for nightmare fuel.

“The conditions impact your critical thinking,” says Probst. “You’re already worried about having enough energy to get through the day, but you can’t really do that five-levels-ahead strategy. You have to conserve your energy to stay alive, you have to conserve your energy for the challenges, and you need to sleep so you can think—but you can’t sleep because other people are making moves. It’s a fascinating thing to watch.”

“You now have a game in which people are exhausted,” he continues. “People are getting injured, advantages are hard to come by, trust is rare, you can’t think straight, and you have to make big moves.”

Those moves, big or small, will come at the hands of 18 brand-new Survivors, divided into tribes based on three attributes: brains, brawn and beauty, as the season’s subtitle implies. It’s the second time Survivor has implemented these tribe divisions, first introduced in Survivor Cagayan, the season that introduced Tony Vlachos, Kass McQuillen, Spencer Bledsoe, Tasha Fox and Woo Hwang into the Survivor universe. Probst says the theme was ripe for further exploration, and it’s all thanks to the casting process.

“Almost all of our themes, anything that revolves around the way we divide the players, typically comes from the casting process,” he says. “We put a lot of faith in our ability to figure it out as it’s unfolding in front of us, and that was the case with this group.”

Prost says it began with the Brains tribe: Chan Loh, wearing blue buffs. “We had this group of huge IQs, and we immediately started thinking, ‘Man, we could have another Brains vs Brawn vs Beauty season on our hands.'” The group includes ice cream entrepreneur Neal Gottlieb, social media manager Aubry Bracco, quantitative strategist Elisabeth Markham and Peter Baggenstos, an emergency room doctor who often gets mistaken for Barack Obama. (“He doesn’t just look presidential,” says Probst. “He’s a very bright guy whose career puts him in crisis situations.”)

The new Brains tribe also features one of the oldest contestants in the history of the game: Joseph Del Campo, a 72-year-old former federal agent who is the same age as Survivor legend Rudy Boesch when Rudy first played the game. “He was a hostage negotiator, and his No. 1 attribute is patience,” says Probst. “He had to be able to sit and listen and wait for the moment to make his move.”

Debbie Wanner, the multi-hyphenate in a tiger-faced swimsuit, rounds out the Brains. “She’s had somewhere between 15 and 100 careers,” says Probst, likening Debbie to someone like unforgettable Survivor personality Coach Ben Wade. “Debbie’s on the Brains tribe, so clearly she’s a bright woman, but socially, is her need to constantly list her resume going to resonate with the rest of the tribe?”

Just as the Brains tribe was beginning to manifest, Probst says the Brawn tribe (To Tang, wearing red) started coming into focus. It began with Scot Pollard, a former professional basketball player who retired from the NBA in 2008 after winning a championship as a Boston Celtic. Pollard follows in the footsteps of fellow Survivor and basketball veteran Cliff Robinson, a part of the original Brawn tribe in Cagayan. Likewise, standing at a towering 6’11”, Pollard was a natural fit for the Brawn tribe—but “Survivor takes a lot more than being big,” says Probst.

Following Pollard, other potential representatives of the Brawn mantle began registering on the radar, like postal worker Darnell Hamilton, Utah contractor Jennifer Lanzetti, real estate agent Alecia Holden (the daughter of a boxing promoter), and body builder Cydney Gillon. But the deal was sealed with the arrival of military veteran Kyle Jason, a bounty hunter who named notorious villain Russell Hantz, a two-time finalist and zero-time winner, as “the only person that has ever truly played the game the way you should” in his CBS bio.

“Jason will get in there and mix it up,” says Probst. “He has no problem telling you everything that’s wrong with you, refusing to call you by your name, and only calling you by a nickname he’s assigned to you.”

Brains and Brawn were coming together, but how about the Beauty tribe? The group, officially known as Gondol and adorned in yellow buffs, consists of Brooklyn poker player Anna Khait, New Jersey bartender Michele Fitzgerald, and 18-year-old Julia Sokolowski, one of the youngest Survivor contestants ever.

“She just finished high school, was just starting college, and now she’s up against a group that includes people in their 40s going as high as their 70s,” says Probst. “What’s really fun about watching Julia is that she can hang. I think she’s going to inspire a bunch of young women to realize that in life, you’re more capable than you think.”

In terms of men, there’s life coach Nick Maiorano, who blogged about the original Brains vs Brawn vs Beauty season on RobHasAWebsite.com before finding his way to the beach. (When asked who has the best hair of the season, Probst readily identifies Nick: “It’s long on top, and he kind of has to whip it over so it falls across his face. I’m always amazing, impressed, and ENVIOUS, in capital letters, of guys who know how to work their hair even when there’s no mirror around.”) There’s also Caleb Reynolds, an army veteran most famous for his appearance on Big Brother 16, where he went by the name Beast Mode Cowboy.

“CBS was really high on Caleb, and I have to be honest, I wasn’t as excited to have him on the show,” admits Probst. “But I was 100% wrong. Caleb is awesome. I think he has things that will resonate with a lot of people: He’s an army vet, he’s religious, he’s a complete team player—but at the same time, he’s telling people, ‘You will never outlast me.’ He will not step down.”

Even with all these people in place, the Beauty tribe—and the theme of the season—was not fully formed until the arrival of Tai Trang, a 51-year-old gardener from San Francisco, originally from Vietnam.

“Tai is the one who came in and he, at least for me, solidified that this was the way we were going to go,” says Probst. “He represented beauty in a way we hadn’t seen before. It’s authentic. I firmly believe the audience is going to fall in love with Tai, and they will understand immediately why he’s on the Beauty tribe.”

Stepping aside from the theme of the season and the divisions of the contestants, Probst looks at the cast of Kaôh Rōng and sees a group unlike many he’s seen before. “I think this is a cast we haven’t seen in a while. There are some very quote-unquote ‘unique’ players,” he says. “There are some interesting people this season that I think the audience is going to root for—or even against, which is often the case.”

Pulling the lens back even further, Probst sees Kaôh Rōng as markedly different from Second Chance, but also two parts of the same whole. If Second Chance is one of the most strategically complicated versions of the game (and a “top five” season, according to Probst), then Kaôh Rōng is the ambassador of the other keynote aspect of Survivor: The intensely harsh, all-too-real brutality of survival.

“I think that’s a great way to explain it. It’s a contrast of two different elements of the game,” says Probst. “If you’ve ever had any doubt that Survivor is real, this season will prove that it is very real.”